Democratic Development and Reckoning with the Past: The Case of Spain in Comparative Context

Those who question the value of truth-telling and retributive justice
processes in the aftermath of atrocities, particularly civil wars, often cite
the case of Spain. Spain has long been thought of as a country whose citizens
seemed nearly universally to accept silence about an extremely destructive civil
war in the service of peace. When Spain emerged from dictatorship after the
death of Franco and built what has proven to be a durable and successful
democracy, the lesson of Spain appeared to be even clearer: willed forgetting
about the past for the sake of the society’s present and future is preferable to
the risks of reckoning with the past, especially when to do so would be to risk
splitting the country once again into the descendants of one side versus those
of the other.

Yet evidence has been mounting that in recent years the Spanish public has
been increasingly actively engaging with the past in a variety of sectors, and
some scholars are arguing that there was never total silence in Spain about
history. What form does the Spanish collective memory about the civil war take
today, and how can we assess the Spanish attempt to reckon with the past in
light of the nation's successful transition to a modern European democracy?

At this workshop, presentations by Carolyn Boyd, a historian of modern Spain, and David
Crocker, a political philosopher specializing in reconciliation,
democratization and developmental ethics, explored these issues against the
backdrop of Spanish history. Other case studies, and the larger questions of
development and democratization, were also explored in a roundtable
question-and-answer period.

To view this event report in its entirety, use the “download”
link below.